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1.5.5-Pilferingapples
Les Miserables 1.5.5 Vague Flashes On the Horizon In Which We Meet A Human Zoo, for Some Reason! Or, Pilf forgets that she needs to move a post out of Drafts to make it publish!:P Forbidden technique though it may be, I really like Hugo’s tendency to introdump a character’s description and salient backstory. Javert gets some great descriptives (including the whole “gypsy race” thing, which I never took literally, but apparently some do? Is this a translation thing? FRENCH READERS HELP) , and I love the idea of this snarly giant cop walking around bundled into his coat like friggin’ Orko from the old He-Man cartoons, and I WOULD NOT HAVE THAT if Hugo weren’t Captain Tellthenshow, so thanks, Hugo. I do not really see how a respect for authority and hatred of rebellion are inherently good and simple traits? It seems an especially odd line in a book with the Chief Angel Priest Goddess of the Revolution. I mean, I don’t respect authority much myself, but some settings encourage it within their narrative, and this…does not seem to be one of them. But aw, I already feel bad for Javert, wolf-bulldog-tiger that he is (wait— does that make him one of The Tigers who Come At Night?). Being against Father Madeleine must be about as popular in M-sur_M as being a Mme. Thenardier shipper in fandom. WHY COULD A LAWMAN HATE OUR GOOD MAYOR IT IS THE MOST MYSTERIOUS MYSTERY THOUGH. Next: Cutscene in Adventure Town:The Fallen Cart! Commentary Gascon-en-exile And so in the moment where Valjean Madeleine attains the same degree of publicly recognized righteousness of the late bishop, it’s time to move away from that and introduce yet another character. I confess that I’ve never found Javert’s character all that interesting - even Hugo says that his personality is simple and rigid to a fault (literally). Supposedly the only reason his two defining traits are so detrimental is ”''à force de les exagérer'',” so as even someone watching the musical for the first time could undoubtedly tell you, Javert would have been much better off if just he could have removed the stick from his ass. Whether it could have been improved if he’d replaced said stick with some other long thick object remains to be conclusively determined. I feel as though green critics would have a field day with this chapter, because there’s a ton of discourse on the relationships between animals, humans, and God - all very anthropocentric, of course, but still rather illuminating if one wanted to pin down Hugo’s opinions on the value of animals as thematic/symbolic devices. I know already that postcolonial critics have made much of these two scant references to Javert being of “''cette race de bohèmes''.” To my knowledge, bohème was used as a broader and more colorful term than g''itan/e'' (“gypsy”), such that it would later become the source of “bohemian” as an English adjective describing any sort of counterculture lifestyle (and, in the late 19th century, slang for a gay man - hello, Sherlock Holmes). However, Hugo identifies Javert as belonging to a particular “race” not once but twice, so I’d guess that he’s saying that Javert is at least part Roma. That wouldn’t necessarily mean that he’s dark skinned, but it would still make him the only major character in the Brick to be a PoC. Considering he’s the primary antagonist, that’s probably not all that great. Doeskin-pantaloons (reply to Gascon-en-exile) I really don’t know if one can describe Javert as the primary antagonist. I mean yes, obviously. If anyone is the primary antagonist, it’s Javert, for a whole number of reasons that we don’t need to list. But basically the primary antagonist is society, right? And I don’t see Javert as being any more evil than anyone else, so I don’t think it’s actually an awkward thing if he turns out to be the only PoC in the entire novel. Especially since Hugo makes such a big deal about how it’s not how you’re born, but how society shapes you, that makes you who you are. And also (let’s assume Javert is part-Roma for a minute) about how Javert felt like he could never really be part of society, and he basically only had the two options of becoming a criminal, or a cop. Like, Hugo could possibly be addressing some issues here. (Maybe. At least, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.) Azalealillebrune (reply to Doeskin-pantaloons' reply) I guess you could say that Javert is an *agent* of the primary antagonist, society. It’s an easier thing for people to put a human face to it, though, rather than worrying about a nebulous idea, and Javert is obviously all about upholding the law etc. But that makes Javert especially sad because he’s an agent of a society that doesn’t represent him or his best interests, that keeps him locked in one of two lifestyles and neither of them are particularly good, and he chooses the one he thinks society might like him better for but they DON’T, they just kind of vaguely tolerate him and pat him on the head, but they’d rather he did his Javerting somewhere else. (He’s a model minority really, both as possibly/probably Roma and as someone from criminal, presumably lower class parents — not that lower class people are a minority, but they’re treated as such.) How many women out there today claim to despise feminism? How many people of colour make racist jokes and claim to hate other ethnicities? Sick societies turn people against their natural allies to keep the elite in charge; it’s why racism got to be such a thing in the Deep South, it was breaking up the natural alliance between black slaves and poor white laborers. Javert is an embodiment of this. He’s an antagonist because society made him into one for it’s own gain. (I’m actually suddenly seeing unexpected parallels to Favourite. Society said her choices were to be a mistress or to be “pure”, and she chose mistress, and that makes Fantine the enemy. This benefits society, because it means those uppity women won’t go getting ideas above their station or, god forbid, helping each other out with situations like premarital pregnancy.) Guinevak (reply to Doeskin-pantaloons' reply) Nope, I think you’re on the right track there. Javert is a threat to other characters, often more sympathetic ones, and overall he’s not really a nice dude, but he’s not the bad guy. He’s more like the bad guy’s faithful henchman who gets stabbed in the back by his boss during the climactic battle. That said, it’s still problematic if he’s the only POC with a speaking part (carmarthen linked to a post about this earlier, and in any case having only one POC in your cast of thousands is in itself a problem). But I think you’re absolutely right that Hugo has as much sympathy for Javert as he does for other characters. He represents one of the many, many ways people cope with living in a fucked-up society, i.e. by colluding with it and hoping it eats him last. ….apparently I am envisioning The State as Doctor Octopus or something. Good thing I’m not writing the book! Pilferingapples (reply to Guinevak's reply) …WHY IS TODAY SO FULL OF ART PROMPTS GAD THIS TOTALLY MAKES LES AMIS THE AVENGERS I AM SO GLAD THAT WAS ALREADY PLANNED. Horribly desire to draw LM/Marvel crossovers aside, yes, I’ve always felt Javert was made to be a sympathetic character, and I’m a bit worried when people don’t get that about him. He’s very moral by his own code, and while he condemns himself in the end I really don’t feel the narrative ever does. I may change my mind when we get there this time! But to me that’s what makes his death tragic; he didn’t have to die, his life was mostly a good and worthy one, but he couldn’t quite make the same leap to faith that Valjean did after Petit Gervais. Guinevak, I hope you’ll talk a lot more about this going forward! Because yeah, Javert’s super complicated, and I’ll take all the help unpacking his character I can find! Guinevak (reply to Pilferingapples' reply) Yeah, Hugo has compassion for basically all of his main cast (with the possible exception of Thenardier père, but I could make an argument there too), and Javert is …. probably the most ambiguous of the lot. He’s not a bad man, but he’s also not a good man. I don’t find him ALL that compelling, and I get impatient with people who rush to excuse all the shitty things he does and says, but he’s DEFINITELY not the villain. And you’re welcome. :P Full disclosure, I don’t actually know anything about comics, but the other metaphor that came to mind was Godzilla… Kalevala-sage I, also, left this completed post open and unpublished in another tab…to address your translation question first, Javert is born of “''une tireuse de cartes,” literally a card-drawer and idiomatically a fortune-teller (of the Tarot variety). ”Gypsy,” aside from being a racial slur, is a liberty. Beginning as all things do with Valjean, this chapter’s description of Valjean as “seeming to have the book of natural law for a soul” was a smoother-than-usual segue by Hugolian standards, and, I thought, preemptively foiled Javert rather nicely; so too did the word “''s’élèvent" in the second sentence (probably "rose" in English), though probably unintentionally. While that simply is the grammatically correct construction (a reflexive conjugation makes a transitive verb self-referential, if that makes any sense), I like that the word almost implies a (self-serving) ambition that Valjean certainly doesn’t have…which too will be emphasized when he’s held up to Javert. Pilferingapples (reply to Kalevala-sage) Thank you for this explanation that I…cannot totally understand but sort of get the point of ! I am sorry I am not smarter here! And thanks for calling my attention to the ‘book of natural law’ bit, I missed that at first!